


when you're awake (the nightmare awaits)

by Icestorm238



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Gen, Nightmares, everything i know about drugs came from a quick googling session, klaus is angsty and ben is so done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 06:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18330872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icestorm238/pseuds/Icestorm238
Summary: Sometimes when Klaus bolts awake in the dead of night, a half-formed scream catching in his throat and tears rising, unbidden, to dampen his cheeks, it is not because of the unyielding horrors of the dead.Klaus wakes from a nightmare. Ben, like always, is there. Sometimes he wishes he wasn't.





	when you're awake (the nightmare awaits)

Sometimes when Klaus bolts awake in the dead of night, a half-formed scream catching in his throat and tears rising, unbidden, to dampen his cheeks, it is not because of the unyielding horrors of the dead.

Well. That’s not strictly true. It’s always the dead, with their rotting fatalities and their incessant screeching, but sometimes it’s not that specific brand of dead.

“Klaus,” Ben says, steady and calming and reassuring and dead, “breathe. You’re awake. You’re okay.”

Klaus tries to do as he says, sucking in harsh breaths that do nothing to help and only make him gasp harder, more frequent, more panicked. “Ben,” he rasps, almost chokes, trying desperately to focus on the intangibly solid face hovering before him instead of the blood-soaked version that has haunted his sleep and haunts him still while he's awake.

He squeezes his eyes shut, as if that’ll be any help in blocking out the gruesome images that assail his mind. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t. 

_ Ben’s limp form, the tentacles receding but the pool of blood growing. Ben’s body, eyes losing their light and convulsions fading in strength. Ben, dead in Klaus’ arms. _

His eyes fly back open and drink in the sight of the not-bloody Ghost-Ben before him: his brother kneeling at his side, one hand hovering, outstretched, wanting to touch but knowing it’s pointless to try.

The monsters that resided beneath his brother’s flesh are still in death, and that's a small mercy for them both. No more hungry snarling or ravenous screeching or limb tearing. No more uncontrollable destruction wrenching kind, loving Ben’s body away from him. 

Ben had cited it - the freedom, the control - as the main benefit of death. 

Klaus had argued that being intrinsically tied to his definitely-favourite brother for the rest of his drug-filled addiction of a life was surely even better. 

(Ben had shaken his head, lips pressed tight together in a repressed smile. “Absolutely not,” had been his light-hearted response. “You’re the worst.”

_ “You’re the worst,” Dream-Ben likes to growl. “My death is on your hands.” _

“Love you too, bro,” Klaus had laughed. Laughed, because if he thought too hard about it all he'd burst into tears again.)

“Klaus,” Ben says again, and Klaus slowly blinks out of his imagination and back to reality - not that reality is that much better, not when he's this sober. “Come on, Klaus, snap out of it. You're alright.”

A ghost shrieks from the doorway. He knows this one, has the shrillness of the sound imprinted in his memory alongside the mental image of gore and guts tumbling from her ripped chest. He flinches regardless.

He needs a hit.

“I need a hit,” he vocalises, the words thick and sticky in his scream-ravaged throat.

“You don't need a hit,” Ben counters, and Klaus can already hear the resignation lacing his tone. “Klaus- no, don't-”

Klaus ignores him and scrambles for the dresser he knows has a stash tucked into a sock in the corner, but Ben, stupid, loyal Ben, quickly throws himself back to lean against it, hands resting against the knobs of the exact drawer Klaus needs, affecting a look of innocence as if he has no idea what he’s doing. Scowling, Klaus shoves his hand through Ben’s chest, an action he usually avoids, ignoring the blue shimmer it creates and the chill that pervades deep beneath his skin as he yanks open the drawer and starts rummaging.

Ben sighs, spinning to stand behind Klaus. The disapproval is as tangible as Ben is not. “Klaus, come on, this isn’t necessary.”

“Shut up,” Klaus hisses, scoring marks into the hard wood in his desperation to find the drugs he knows are there. “Shut up! I need this, Ben, you know that!”

It _is_ necessary, if only to get Klaus high enough that Ben is reduced to a hooded shadow, and Klaus can no longer see that sweet, caring face caked in blood and rotting before his eyes.

_ It’s not real, _ he thinks, although his harsh breathing and racing pulse prove his body doesn’t see as much sense as his mind.  _ Ben’s fine - long dead, long gone, but fine. _

A different ghost screams from the corner of the room. Another wails from the window. Klaus’ trembling fingers close around the drugs. He rips them from their hiding place, resolutely ignores Ben and his stupid brotherly concern, shakes the pills into his hand and downs them in one go.

He watches Ben wince from the corner of his eye - whether it’s because of the drugs, the still-howling ghosts or a combination of both, Klaus couldn’t say. “Damn it, Klaus.”

“Damn yourself,” Klaus mutters in an undertone. “I’m plenty damned already, thank you.”

Now to wait the excruciating half hour or so while the drugs work their magic. He slides to the floor, making a seat for himself amid the scattered clothes and the bugs and the things he tries not to think too hard about.

“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” Ben says. He slumps onto Klaus’ bed - although it barely passes for a bed, just a mould-ridden mattress and a threadbare blanket, and Ben cannot truly slump or even sit, since he’d pass right through if he tried. He  _ mimics _ a slump, and hovers over Klaus’  _ makeshift _ bed.

Klaus still cannot meet his eyes, cannot bear to watch them go dim for the millionth time. “Hey, you have no idea what I have to deal with, brother dearest, so you don’t get to judge.”

“I can also see the ghosts now, in case you’ve forgotten.” He gestures, and Klaus’ catches the movements in the corner of his vision. “They’re no kinder to my sanity than they are to yours.”

“You haven’t had to deal with it all your life.” Klaus scowls at the floor, tracing a smiley face in the grime acting as its second layer.

Ben scoffs, adjusting his hover-slump. “Only all my death. I’d ask how you put up with them all but, well,” he gestures again, at gutless girl and corner crier and window wailer and all the other ghosts Klaus has managed to ignore thus far, “I already know the answer to that one.”

“Maybe you should try it, Benny,” Klaus grins, lifting his head and fixating on a point on the wall just to Ben’s left. His finger continues to drag across the floorboards, cutting a bloody gouge in the eyes of his face. He shifts his gaze when it meets the eyes - or lack of - of the ghost with two cavernous holes settled too-deep in his misshapen head.

“Dead,” is Ben’s simple reply. “Can’t. Not that I would.”

Klaus pouts. “You’re no fun.”

They fall into a familiar silence, one they’ve perfected over the years. The drugs are starting to kick in: one moment Ben’s emotions (read: disapproval, exasperation) are as plain on his face as they were in life; Klaus blinks and his hood is shrouding his face, and those emotions are gone.

Ben is different when Klaus is high. Still Ben, still the same sarcastic bastard Klaus knows and loves, but different. Quieter, withdrawn. Less. In this median state he juggles quips with moments of blankness, emotion with nothingness.

Klaus prefers Sober-Ben, but Sober-Klaus cannot handle the gory fantasies his mind is pushing at him, so. High-Ben will have to do.

“I have nightmares too, you know.”

Ben’s voice rings hollowly in the emptiness of the room and Klaus starts at the sound..

“You’re dead; you don’t sleep,” he shoots back anyway. He pauses, considers. “Do you sleep?”

“No,” Ben glares from beneath the hood, the narrowed eyes less severe than they would have been a minute ago, “but I have to entertain myself somehow while you’re unconscious or too high to notice me. I ran out of distractions a long time ago.”

“Oh, good to know I’m just your  _ distraction.” _

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Ben snaps. Even that is softer, somehow. His fingers rub against the fabric lining his pocket, fabric only Ben can feel. “I spend half my time worrying about you and your idiocy and the other half trying not to think about the past.”

Klaus fiddles with the frayed edge of his torn shirt, a shirt lots of people could feel if they wished, but not Ben. Never Ben. “Get high,” he laughs, because his own high is definitely kicking in now, the buzz simmering in his veins and numbing everything. He can hear his own breathing in the void the ghosts leave behind, which is a near impossibility when sober.

“Great,” Ben sighs, rubbing a fist against one weary, shaded eye. “You’re useless like this.”

Klaus laughs again, loud, uncaring, not bothering to reply, and lets himself lie back on the floor. Something prods into his spine and a wetness pools beneath his right shoulder, but Klaus is too high to care about the filth anymore.

His brother is almost completely gone now. If Klaus was looking he knows he wouldn’t be able to make out Ben’s features anymore, but he can’t look for fear of seeing blood in place of the kind eyes he loves and misses so much.

He doesn’t look.

“Bye Benny,” he giggles. “See you when I’m sober again.”

Ben won’t leave, not entirely, never entirely, and Klaus is always grateful for that, but right now he needs the peace the drugs provide, and he welcomes Ben’s inability to reply.

He knows, inevitably, that when he’s sober enough for Ben to interact, he will grin through the disfigurement his brain insists mars Ben’s face and will carry on until the next Ben-related nightmare, until the next time he’s desperate to escape his brother, until the cycle begins all over again.

For now he sinks into delirium, and lets it all drift away.


End file.
